SIX
It didn't take me long at Elhalia to realise that this was not the place to meet the man of my dreams. Most of the guys I worked with were more interested in each other, while the straight crew appeared to be players, enjoying their free trips around the world, consuming and quickly disposing of women between flights. This left the pilots. Contrary to the mythological image of the dashing pilot I had in mind, most of the men at the pointy end of the aircraft were old enough to be my father, and some even my grandfather. They reminded me more of my crusty university professors, rather than the chic, suave fighter jet types I had imagined. Their personalities were often dry, as desolate as the desert we all called home. I was sometimes lucky to get more than a nod, when meeting the greying, stern flight deck. And there was rarely any small talk. It was as if it were an inefficient use of air and energy to spend time on frivolous pleasantries such as talking about day off or layover plans. Weather-talk, however, could send some off on a detailed explanation of pressure systems, icing conditions, ambient temps and humidity, and a whole range of terms I never understood, but they apparently loved. The flight deck door seemed to divide two very different personality groups. Occasionally some pilots were funny and charming, but in a grandfatherly way. That was as close as we would get to the pilots. Few and far between were the polite, handsome thirty-somethings that might have been safe to bring home to mother. Sadly though, rumour had it that they were just as promiscuous as the cabin crew.
Then there was Daniel Barron, a first officer with a tall, solid frame. He looked like he could have been a model, a few years earlier. The daily assault of UV rays through the flight deck windows was doing wonders for his complexion. He looked like he had been holidaying on a tropical island. His big, white smile contrasted superbly against his tanned skin. There were a few wrinkles emerging on his model worthy face, but it seemed to bestow upon him the wisdom and worldliness of a man responsible for our lives, not to mention a multimillion dollar piece of machinery.
He stood out from his ageing, sometimes cold and smug colleagues, and noticeably drew the eye of other female crew. I once noticed passengers in the terminal give him a slightly longer look than what was standard for the typical catwalk gawk. He was good looking and he knew it.
I was alone in the front galley after the business class supper service was complete. The other crew were on rest or gossiping in the rear galley, I was pleased to see him step out of the flight deck door.
"So, how are things out here?" His Tennessee accented voice was deep. He smiled as he spoke, fixing his untucked shirt. I recognised him as the pilot who made me get the air sample on my first day. I suddenly felt self-conscious, and hoped he didn’t remember me. I put down the apple I was munching on and wiped at my mouth to remove any embarrassing leftovers. My posture straightened and my blood pressure seemed to rise. I was a pathetic little schoolgirl again.
"Just minding the shop. He he." I laughed nervously.
"What? All by yourself? Where are the others? They just abandoned you.?”
There was a delay in my answer. I was concentrating so much on his accent, rather than what he was saying.
"Yeh, they're ahh, just ahhh…. Yes. You're right. They abandoned me." I gave up mid sentence making excuses for the other crew. He could see I was trying to lie for them, and it wasn't going to work. He enjoyed my honesty, as if he knew more about the goings on at the back of the plane than any pilot would let on.
"Ha. I see, I see. Anyway, just thought I'd come out for a stretch." He said stretching his arms out in front and back again. I stood up, like a soldier at attention, the jumpseat snapping shut behind me, crushing the magazine I was reading.
"Can I get you gentlemen anything? How are things going in there?" It was customary and polite to offer the pilots food and drinks at regular intervals in flight, but on this occasion my gesture was made out of a genuine desire to please the dashing flyboy.
“We’re good,” he gave a monetary vacant stare and his eyes shot up to say, “I can't wait to land this thing.” Being stuck in the tiny flight deck, on a long haul stretch, must have been incredibly painful for pilots whose personalities clashed. Or even if a captain was in a bad mood, his subordinate crew were in no position to question his manner, no matter how much human factors training and company policy said they were. The reality was that the captain was God, even though flight deck hierarchy among the world's airlines was meant to be less severe than it once was. Cabin crew, at least had the option of hiding in another part of the plane or stocking up on disinfectant wipes and heading off to clean some filthy, yet peaceful toilets if one's colleagues were so insufferable. Scarily, it was this ‘God’ mentality–this steep step between captain and underlings–that was responsible for many avoidable crashes. Smarter, yet more junior crew could foresee a problem but were either shutdown or too intimidated by their captains to make a difference.
He was looking around the galley, seemingly unsure what to do next. He had done his stretch, and now he would have to return to the chamber of tension-filled boredom. He was desperate to find something to occupy his time before he would have no excuse but to return through the bulletproof door. We began a conversation that would lead to my time at the airline being more exhilarating, yet more terrifying and painful than I had foreseen. As we began talking, a felt the small pin pricks under my skin, that told me there was a chance of finding an extraordinary man like First Officer Daniel Barron, all for myself. Maybe there were some decent sorts here, I thought. We started by talking about our lives back home. He had spent nine years in the US Air Force and had been flying since leaving high school. I tried to calculate his age based on the clues he recanted from his personal history. I figured he was about thirty, close to what I had suspected. He had never been married, and I hoped he was not another player. The inevitable topic of crew dating came up. It seemed every galley conversation went that way eventually. Here, he let slip that he had once dated a flight attendant, but had called it off due to ‘complications.’ I was satisfied that he was not one who would “screw the crew.”
We joked and we giggled. We told each other things that neither of us had probably told anyone at the company before. His smile was infectious. We flirted. It was as of we were on a date in the middle of the night, bound for Tokyo. My feelings about my job changed within seconds. For days, with the Bali incident still fresh in my mind and the bizarre personalities I could not seem to escape, I had been thinking that it was mistake to fly for a living. Now I loved it. There was hope. Maybe I hadn't made the biggest mistake of my young life. Nearly thirty minutes had passed, and he needed to return to the flight deck, to watch his screens and perform his calculations. I felt a strange sadness when he phoned the captain to buzz him back in. The door slammed shut and I was alone again. That is until Simon poked his head through the curtain, his plastic face shining under the galley lights.
"You looked like you were enjoying yourself." His grin was cheeky, snide and not friendly. He laughed to himself, as if he knew something I didn't. His head disappeared and he was gone. I was glad to see him leave. He wasn't about to ruin the best moment I'd had since leaving home.
Without Tanya on the Tokyo trip, Simon was keen to do his own thing, and I was glad to have a break from him. Daniel said he was dreading the idea of spending the layover locked in his hotel room and I was keen to finally get a chance to do some sightseeing without the usual gang with me. After the flight, Daniel and I discreetly organised to get out and explore Tokyo. The streets of Shibuya were colourful, and frenetically paced. We walked in out of Pachinko rooms, where locals with intensity written all over their faces concentrated on winning the game. Daniel tried his luck, but was hopeless. His inability caught the attention of a group of youths who laughed at his pathetic abilities
In a quitter part of town, I felt like I was in a clichéd Japanese movie as we walked beneath the blooming pink cherry blossoms. I nearly expected to meet a crowd of geishas on our picture perfect wal
k. But surely, if I were in a movie, I would have the misfortune of meeting an angry Godzilla, I thought to myself.
It was a perfect day. That evening I couldn't stand to let Daniel go. Nobody would have to know about us. I was good at keeping secrets. My room would remain empty, while I spent the night with Daniel.
The next morning I awoke to the sound of Daniel's phone vibrating loudly on the bedside table. I pulled the pillow over my head to stop the violent noise from drilling into my sleepy, sensitive ears.
“Daniel Barron speaking…..Yes…Oh…Yes….. Ok…. Thanks.” He dropped the phone loudly back on the table.
“Sorry, that was the captain. We've been delayed until they send in a part. The engineers found a problem with our aircraft last night. Could be twenty or so hours. He'll get back to us later today with a departure time,” he said, stretching.
The news slowly made sense as my foggy mind pieced it together. After taking a few seconds to remember which city I was in, followed by recalling the previous day's events that had led me to wake up with a man I had just met, I then realised what it meant. I would have another day in Tokyo with my handsome pilot. I hoped I could hide from the other crew for another day without making them suspicious. I suddenly felt self conscious of my nakedness and pulled the covers over me a little tighter. Daniel was confident lying sprawled out with barely a square foot of the sheet covering just below his waste.
“Guess what?” he said, “We’re ferrying the aircraft back.”
The ferry flight was a privilege for any airline crew. To have an entire aircraft in flight without passengers was the stuff of dreams for any airline geek. I sat behind the pilots as we rolled down the runway, propelled by thousands of pounds of thrust. We left the earth, flying over the glistening bridges and city lights and out into the sky. It was our own private aircraft, and my imagination flirted with the idea that we could take it anywhere we wished. Without passengers, we were free to leave the flight deck door open, and to come and go as we pleased. We lounged around lazily in business class seats. We helped ourselves to the full load of business class catering that had been mandatorily loaded. We cooked up gourmet meals and followed them with a sneaky glass of champagne. We all made a pact that nobody would snitch. We already had dirt on each other anyway. We were safe from rules.
It was heaven.
It was the top of the world.
As we arrived back at the crew compound, Simon and I waited until everyone walked off, before telling me what he knew.
“Oh honey, you messed up badly.” He said.
“What are you talking about, Simon?” I knew exactly what he was talking about.
“Damn, that’s what they call ‘pilot error.’” He said, looking at me pitifully.
“What is?”
“Screwing the crew.”
“Mind your own business.” I said, pulling out the handle from my suitcase, ready to leave.
“Wait. It is my business now.”
“Why?”
“Your pilot friend is Tanya’s fiancé.”
“What!” I said. My eyes closed, trying to wish it all away.
“I knew he wouldn’t tell you.”
“But he said he was single.”
"Of course he did! Look, it’s a marriage of convenience really. He sleeps around. So does she. But they’re getting married anyway. Not because they’re particularly fond of each other, as you may have noticed. It’s for other reasons. Just like people did in the old days. It’s sort of a financial arrangement.”
“This is just so weird.”
“And although they’re not that into each other, she’s an extremely jealous person. He is her possession, and you’ve just tried to take it.”
“No, I haven’t!”
“But that’s how she sees it. And her perception is the only one that matters. I just want you to be careful. That’s all.”
“That bastard.”
“He’s being promoted to captain soon, I heard. So he’s particularly valuable to her.
She’ll love the extra cash it brings. And the prestige. That’s what she wants. Just be careful because she’ll know what happened soon enough.”
“How.”
“People talk. You didn’t really think you’d be ale to keep it secret, did you? This is an airline, not the CIA.”
“Maybe I should just leave.”
“You've been here a few months now. That’s like five minutes.”
“Five minutes can be a long time. You can drown in that time.”
“Do you feel like you are drowning here?”
“Well it’s not what I expected.”
“Toughen up princess. You made a mistake. You screwed the crew. The big rule you won’t find in the manual: Don’t screw the crew. And what did you do? You screwed the crew.”
“Okay, dammit.”
“She’s coming back now soon from the US. I heard something happened on their Las Vegas layover and her crew has been replaced.”
“What happened?”
“From the gossip I heard, it doesn’t sound good. I think somebody died.”
“My God! That’s awful. A crew member?”
‘Yeh, he fell off a balcony.”